where fast the Arctic nights set in

[perfectcameo]

Who: Logan, Laura Kinney, Njoki Rainmaker, and some other people probably. Not all at the same time.
What: Existing in Baedal once an obvious exit sign has since not been found.
Where: Various!
Warnings: Swearing, so we can get an Oscar.

Shaking the cage of people in his same predicament, turns out, isn't as engaging as he had hoped. He doesn't like the CiD, it fits wrong in his hand, he feels like he could shatter it if he draws tendon and bone tight in a fist, and its mechanisms feel too small for his fingers. But eventually, he sends off a text message, some delayed and somewhat grudging.

could use that beer

He misses traffic, too. Cars don't spook so easily and he can live out of a truck.

There is a time after dusk that he picks up a scent, and follows it all the way into the Spatters. He'd been looking for it before and despite the waning hour, because a little darkness never killed nobody, and he had to know.

The evenings he isn't working in the gambling dens, with cards and fists both, to make his way are spent in hibernation on uncomfortable mattresses with a roof over his head. Daylight holds as many bar interiors as the evening. It isn't like useless, purposeless roaming never suited him before.

It just chafes, this time around.

[ OOC: See comments for some thread starters, both open and closed, otherwise make your own! ]

Comments

a bar of ki's choice. closed to njoki rainmaker.

[perfectcameo]

How're you holding up? is one of those common questions, so let's answer that with the kind of answer Logan would give: okay.

And he is. When he sits down, a little early because where the fuck else does he have to be, he has no injuries to speak of for all that he has earned them. He gets enough sleep because why deprive himself of that, and his face, wearing its age, doesn't present shadows or nightmares.

Mostly, he seems bored, but he flags himself down a beer and folds his arms on the bar top, leather jacket creaking over broad shoulders.

[aldabeyoun]

After agreeing to meet at The Apache, Njoki finished repairing the remade bantha (or whatever the hell it was), scrubbed up well because they smell only slightly better than a tauntaun, and made her way over to the bar.

"Hey."

[perfectcameo]

He's digging out a cigar from his pocket by the time he's joined with company, glancing sidelong and then tipping up his chin in a nod of greeting rather than echoing the same thing back at her. Logan's own beer is partway drained already when he offers; "Can I get ya anything?"

Which is when he picks up his half-finished beverage and-- well. Swallows down the rest with little effort.

[aldabeyoun]

"S'on me," she says, keeping her promise as she flags down the bartender and orders a pint of something keg brewed and reasonably popular.

Logan is welcome to notice that her body language is a bit unusual for someone full human. There's something 'off' about her posture and the way her joints line up and move. She smells of a recent shower with a mildly cedar scented soap, under that there's sandalwood, old blood, gunpowder, beeswax and something animalistic.

[perfectcameo]

Fair enough, and so Logan occupies himself with lighting up, coaxing flame to the blackening end of his cigar. He's found a brand he tolerates, being something of a creature of habit; but he should know as well as anyone that times change, even when he doesn't. He just is lazy with his adaptation.

What he picks up about Njoki is nearly subconscious to him, his senses ever working over time and the Apache vibrant enough to lay cotton over intangible detail. He reeks, as ever, of smoke and leather and someone who sleeps in said leather on occasion.

He isn't actually good at smalltalk, so he lets her fix the drinks before he has to think of stuff. He does come up with; "Thanks."

[aldabeyoun]

Njoki chuffs and moves to clink her glass against his in an impromptu toast in lieu of telling Logan he's welcome. "To the universal constant of beer?"

The cigar smoke doesn't bother her, but then again, not much in The Apache does. Ki is comfortable and confident both because she's been here before but also because she knows they have no problem with xenians. Other than being able to sense the undead, Njoki doesn't really have any skill when it comes to identifying who or what her drinking companion might be.

[perfectcameo]

And Logan comes from a place where sometimes, people smell, look, and move a little weird, which was training wheels compared to some of what he's seen in Baedal. Fortunately, the science that made up his home was just as mystical to him as the magic that's infused in Baedal, and it doesn't make a lick of difference. He lets his glass get dinked, and takes a long pull of it.

"I'll toast to that," he agrees, ever lowkey. He drinks. "Congratulations on the offer of a free drink being about the only thing I remember from that whole thing."

[aldabeyoun]

"You seemed like a stand-up kind of guy," she says with a shrug. "And, I think it's a damn good idea to know who's in the cohort."

"You weren't here for it, but the last time the city went to shit, the gods tasked our cohort to do a bunch of Hercules' labours." Which is only slightly less mad than it actually sounds, but it provides a good reason to want to know reliable (or reliable looking) people.

[perfectcameo]

"What, cleaning out stables, killing lions, that sorta thing?"

Elbows on the countertop and framing his beer, cigar caught between two thick fingers, Logan is about as close to relaxed as he generally gets, which is to say slightly never relaxed, not when he has his back for the door and he's still in kidnap city and learning to get used to the idea.

He doesn't bat an eye about gods, either. He's read things, and that seems about as sane as being trapped by fog and monsters in Magicville.

[aldabeyoun]

"Looking for a magic lantern and paid by the gods with a letter home."

Njoki's not too sure how she feels about it, but she's used to a wide, strange world filled with deities and spirits.

"I can't deny, it's a bit shit, but I like being able to practice my trade in the open. Hoodoo and fleshcraft, if you know it?"

[perfectcameo]

"People bought that?"

And only after he gravels out this sharp edged piece of cynicism does it occur that maybe Njoki was one of said people that indeed bought that. He knocks loose cigar cinders into an ashtray, mouth pressing into a brief line before he glances at her, shakes his head at whether he knows much about hoodoo and fleshcraft, but he isn't uninterested either; his inquiry is just silent.

[aldabeyoun]

"Seemed to work or at least those of us with a letter could sell it off for a good price." For all the trouble, it was a good way to shore up her supplies and settle into the city.

"Mostly I work on the undead, some remade, some other folk who can't heal like the living. It's messy, but it's work, right?"

[perfectcameo]

"Not like they can take out health insurance." Wherever Logan comes from, he's heard weirder, or at least, there's room for that kind of weird even if he hasn't. "I, uh. My trade doesn't exactly translate, from where I come from to here." He didn't ask at the employment office if some off-shoot of the X-Men were recruiting, but he also didn't need to.

He shrugs. "I woulda picked a nicer place to go for a vacation, but you take what you get."

[aldabeyoun]

"At least it's warmer than Montreal, eh?" While her accent is mostly North African francophone, there's enough of a twang to her vowels that someone who's familiar with Canadian accents could place her as living in Quebec.

[perfectcameo]

That actually gets a laugh out of Logan; small and smokey, maybe, a fleeting huff before it's over, but it lingers in the quirk of a half-smile as he glances at her side on. She coulda just said that particular place at random, but he can pick up the notes in her voice as well.

"Canada?" Well, there you go. He taps ash off his cigar. "Sorry. Half expect folks to say they're from the fucking moon, or the magical kingdom of... wherever."

[aldabeyoun]

"You saying that my home isn't a magical kingdom?" Njoki, no. It is a lovely city and a very old one at that, but it is not the equivalent of Walt Disney World. "Where're you from then? You don't spit enough to be from La Belle Provence. "